Think I'll mock up a BT60 based Saturn V - little blow-up work with the copier on a carded Saturn V model I downloaded a few years ago just to get an idea. Though with TWO Dr Zooch Saturns waiting to be built (thanks to Randy at erockets for the second from my visit to build night!) it's not like I need more Saturns...yeah I do ;-)

Has anyone ever produced a BT-80 based Saturn V kit? Doing some rough math gives you a 28.6 inch length - a Saturn V just a few inches longer than a Big Bertha sounds like a good idea to me .

Kit? No, not to my knowledge, though a few of us have scratch-built one...

It's a shame it's never been kitted, because it IS a REALLY nice size for a Saturn V... big but not TOO big, can be detailed without having to be SUPER-detailed to look right. (The bigger a scale kit is, the smaller and finer the details that must appear on it for it to "look right"... the smaller a scale kit, the less detail and less well-defined detail is necessary for it to look right... case in point-- complex wraps and fine detail on the 1/100 Saturn V necessary for it to look good, whereas on the Dr. Zooch roughly 1:252 Saturn V (BT-60 main tube) printed wraps with mere printed lines looks fine for detailing).

The BT-80 based Saturn V is roughly 1:158 scale... it's nearly a perfect match with the Dr. Zooch BT-60 sized Saturn I's and Saturn IB's... (a BT-80 Saturn V would use a BT-60 for the S-IVB stage, same as the Dr. Zooch Saturn IB's). The proportions are almost perfect (there is a SLIGHT scale difference between the BT-80 tube (2.6 inch diameter) compared to the 396 inch Saturn S-IC/S-II stage stack, and the BT-60 tube (1.367 inch diameter IIRC) and the 260 inch S-IVB stage (the S-IC is about 1:158 scale and the S-IVB is 1:152 scale, but it's not really enough to even notice, and if one wanted to, you could build up one or the other with a layer of paper or cardstock to obtain the exact outer diameter so the scales match...

I turned my own S-II/S-IVB transition from foam, but all the parts for the LEM adapter and Apollo capsule I got a few years ago from Dr. Zooch, including one of his tower kits from a Saturn IB... Since they're the same size tube (BT-60) on his Saturn IB kit, the same parts can be used to make a BT-80 Saturn V since the S-IVB tube is BT-60 on both rockets... IIRC Dr. Zooch sourced the parts from BMS, so one could get the parts from Bill, or if push came to shove, simply cannibalize a Dr. Zooch Saturn IB kit for the needed parts... (or turn all of them yourself, which isn't terribly difficult... )

The BT-60 based semi-scale Saturn V was an AWFUL stand-WAYYYYY-OFF 'scale' abomination of a kit.
Always wished Estes would make a Saturn V the 1/70 scale of the K-29 Saturn 1B.
Now THAT would be a kit.
No, I don't want a 1/70 kit with the cost of the Apogee one.

__________________When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and NEVER touch the brake !!!
No Harm=NO Foul advocate

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask, you probably aren't !

I really think the Always Saturn it the best of all worlds for a flyable Saturn at a decent price. BMS should return this kit to production. Even at a higher prices than the originals it would still sell I believe.

__________________
NAR # 102461 SR
I have orbited the earth with John Glenn, walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong, landed on Mars, seen Jupiter and Saturn and explored the realm of deep space all thanks to Model rocketry.
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